Hogwarts: After the War
by LeptonMadness
Summary: It has been 3 years since the battle of Hogwarts, and 10 since The Boy Who Lived first stepped into the school and a new class of first-years enter to be educated in the Magical Arts. But while the new students try to juggle school, puberty, and their emerging magic, they find themselves caught in the midst of an Alchemical plot that leads them to the dying Nicholas Flamel.
1. Chapter 1

AN: Yael's mother and father are Israeli Jews who emigrated to Britain, where they met and got married, so the family occasionally uses Hebrew words. She calls her parents "Ima" and "Abba" which mean "Mom" and "Dad" and they sometimes call her "motek" which means "sweetie".

It was something of an absurdist masterpiece. It was around 3 pm on a hot and muggy July Tuesday when an actual live owl, carrying a letter — sealed with a circle of red wax, no less — flew into my window and perched on the wooden post of my small bed. It cocked its head to the side expectantly, as if my failure to promptly accept the intrusion and the letter was the event that was truly out of the ordinary. I didn't want it to bite me, if that's what owls do, so I slowly and silently pulled out my phone and texted Ima: there's a bird in my room and she came up the stairs, opened the door to my room, and shooed the owl out with a broom. It left the letter behind on my bed.

My mother gave me a funny look. "What was this bird doing here, Yael?" She asked.

I shook my head in disbelief. "Um. I dunno. It looks like it left a letter." I picked it up. "And it's … addressed to me."

"What?" She asked.

"Yeah." I frowned and read out the calligraphed writing on the front. "'Ms. Y. Sterling, The Upstairs Bedroom, 10 Camden Road, Sutton, City of London.' Wow, that's oddly specific."

"Why was your window open?"

"Ima, I didn't expect a nocturnal bird to deliver me a letter from..."

I turned the envelope over. The wax seal was imprinted with an "H," and some kind of strange looking medieval crest. There was no return address.

"Do you think it's from the Renaissance Fair?" I asked. She shrugged. We had all gone to the Renaissance Fair a few weeks ago to celebrate the end of school. Because we miss a lot of school during the High Holidays at the beginning of the year, my school doesn't get out until the end of June. It's okay though, because my Birthday is at the end of June - June 27th and if I went to a regular school, on top of having to miss for every Jewish holiday, I wouldn't get to celebrate my birthday during the school year.

I opened the letter.

"Dear Ms. Sterling," I read aloud, "We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." I looked up from the letter. "Ima, are you and Abba sending me off to the Circus to become a Magician? I know I'm hard to deal with, but you guys signed the adoption papers when I was two; you can't just send me back."

My mom laughed. "Motek, if we had wanted to get rid of you, we would have done it a long time ago. You're stuck with your Ima and Abba, like it or not."

When I people learn that I was adopted, they sometimes think it must be a really taboo subject in my family. They sometimes ask "when did you find out?" as if my mom sat me down one day confessed that she hadn't given birth to me and that everything I thought I knew was a lie. That's not what it was like for me at all. I usually respond by asking "when did you find out you weren't adopted?" because I knew all along that my Ima and Abba didn't give birth to me, and it never mattered. When I was little, my Ima used to joke that I was picky about getting the best possible parents, so that was why they had to fill out an application before she could be my Ima. I didn't realize until I went to nursery school that not everyone's parents had applied to have their kids, and I secretly worried about non-adopted kids: "what if they got the wrong parents?"

"Anyways," Ima said, "I don't know this 'Hogwarts'. I have never heard of it. It sounds like a joke. Who's the Headmaster?"

I looked at the letterhead. "Headmistress, actually. Minerva McGonagall, D. Mag, Order of Merlin, first class. And the Deputy Headmaster is named Filius Flitwick, he's the one that the letter's actually from. And it says that they..." I put my fingers in the air for fake quotes, "await my owl by no later than July 31st."

Before I could say anything else, there was a knock on the door. My mother turned her head towards Abba's studio "Baruch, can you get that?"

I suddenly felt a strange rush through my whole body, as if an electric spark were jumping from the back of my neck through my chest and spreading all over. I don't know why, but the sound suddenly made me feel shocked and afraid and alive, and I ran down the stairs and I knew it was for me. I made it downstairs just as Abba was opening the door.

At the door stood a thin woman, pale with wild black curls and long fingers adorned with many rings of different sizes and shapes. She wore a dark purple cloak and a matching hat of a tall cone with a wide brim, decorated with small stars and astronomical symbols.

She reached into her sleeve and took out a piece of parchment. "I'm terribly sorry for the intrusion." She stated. "Is this the residence of Ms. Yael Sterling?"

"That's me!" I said, and I walked to the door. The woman shook my hand.

"My name is Professor Aurora Sinistra. I'm here from Hogwarts. I believe you received our letter. Normally, these are hand-delivered in the case where a student comes from a muggle family, but I think the quill was confused because one of your birth parents must have been a Witch or Wizard."

Abba stared blankly at at the woman. "I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying. Hogwarts? Muggle? Quill? My English is not the best. I don't know what you mean."

Professor Sinistra raised her eyebrows. "Oh, of course you wouldn't know what I'm saying! You wouldn't have heard of Hogwarts or any of that. Mr. Sterling, I am here to tell you that your daughter is incredibly special. She has great talents that she doesn't even know about yet."

She leaned down slightly and looked me in the eye. "You're a Witch, Yael."


	2. Chapter 2

AN: I just had the unfortunate occurrence of spilling coffee all over my computer. Fortunately, my files were all backed up, so I haven't lost any work, but it's a little harder work on this story on library computers. So enjoy this teaser trailer while I work on getting the full chapter out. Future installments will continue, but no promises on how frequent just yet.

**Chapter 2**

There was an awkward silence for a few seconds before my mother, coming down the stairs, interrupted the woman in the heliotrope cloak.

"She's a what?" she asked. "Did you just call my daughter a witch?" Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Like with the broomsticks_,_ and the hexes, and the warts?"

The woman smiled. "Well, witches and wizards aren't _exactly_ like in your books." She leaned down again to face me. "You're like me," she said serenely. "You have magic in you. With the proper education, you could even be a sorceress or an alchemist..."

"I'm sorry," said my father, interrupting her. "But we're not interested in buying your magic book or amulet, or whatever."

Professor Sinestra laughed. "Oh, you think I'm trying to sell you something? This isn't a scam. I'm actually a witch." She pulled a stick out from the folds of her robes, and pointed the tip at our fireplace. "Please forgive the intrusion, I promise I'm not about to break anything. It's just that I know you muggles wouldn't believe me without a demonstration, and I do _not_ want to cause a scene in the middle of the street. _Incendio!_"

A pulse of red light shot from her wand, through the glass screen, and struck the fake plastic logs, where a fire started to crackle merrily. The smoke rose for about a foot, before meeting the boarded-up chimney, and started to pour into the living room. Within a few seconds, the fire-alarm's shrill beeping started to fill the room.

"Shit!" Ima said, running over to the fireplace.

"Put it out!" I said to Professor Sinestra. She pointed her wand at the fireplace again and muttered "_Aguamenti_," and stream of water somehow flew from the tip of her wand. It struck the fire, and even more smoke poured out as the fire was quenched.

My mom and dad were both running around now, trying to fan the smoke away from the smoke detector. Professor Sinestra leaned down to me.

"Why are your parents waving their newspapers at the ceiling?" She asked. "And where's that noise coming from?"

"It's the smoke detector." I said impatiently. "Look, you did this. Can you at least come inside and clear out the smoke?"

She hesitated. "I'm really not supposed to do magic in front of muggles after the demonstration."

"What?"

"I'm not supposed to do magic in front of them. The less they know, the better."

I took a breath. The smoke alarm was starting to give me a headache. "I don't believe you then." I said, putting my hands on my hips. "I don't believe you're a real witch unless you can clear the smoke."

She smiled. "Fine." She pointed her wand at the ceiling. "_Ventus Fumos._"

I watched her wand carefully this time, trying to understand how a solid piece of knotted wood could produce fire, water, air - and who knows what else. There didn't seem to be a hole in the wand where the wind blew from, the wind just seemed to get its power from an energy that flowed through the wand from the old woman's body. After a few moments, when the smoke was gone and the wand had been returned to the old woman's robes, we all decided to sit in the living room and discuss the fact that apparently witchcraft was a real thing. We were now in on a conspiracy that involved God knows how many people. At least a whole school.

To be honest, it was actually kind of bad-ass. I totally felt like one of the Mutants from X-Men.


End file.
